Quote:
Originally Posted by classicswede
The bracket is there from teh factory, without it they exhaust is more prone to cracking
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If you imagine bolting 12 feet of heavy pipework on to the exhaust manifold, supported loosely on flappy rubber rings, and then rocking the engine about vigorously, there's bound to be an enormous stress on the downpipe or the three bolts holding it on?
Bolting it solidly to the engine a few feet down the pipe makes sense to me.
What doesn't make such sense is having such loose mountings further down the pipework. Most of the catalyst and silencer failures I've ever had have been cracks where the pipe joins them. If you waggle the tailpipe about there's a considerable movement which can only be the pipe flexing somewhere. On other exhaust systems I'm familiar with the exhaust hangers get progressively stiffer the further from the engine, and the final one under the bumper is often a stiff rubber block permitting very little movement.
I'm often amazed that the Volvo system lasts as well as it does, considering how much the pipework flaps around.